Confluence
by sakurasencha
Summary: It wasn't love. It wasn't hate. It was something that flowed much deeper, down to the roots of Hyrule and beyond. Two rivers, that however far apart, will always converge together as one. BOTW pre-game.
1. Chapter 1

_I wanted to upload this as one long one-shot, but that's just not where my fanfic writing is at the moment. So I'm going to up load it in manageable chunks which might force me to actually finish it. Submitted for C/P's challenges by the dozen and winter self-care challenge._

 _Study in narrative style. Alternating POVs between Link and Zelda._

* * *

His mother calls him _my river child_ , because he never stops running.

Carving pathways through Faron's thick grasses, high as his head and yellowed by summer sun. Scrambling over granite tors and the rotting logs that are the very bones of Lanayru's swamplands. Link never sees a horizon but to fling himself headlong into it, little muscles lithe and weedy, his skin a patchwork of blisters, scrapes, and scars. Songs of laughter tumble from his lips as darting butterflies, chasing him, chased by him, round and round in the endless race of youth, and when twilight dims the sky to cobalt-grey, he tramps home with all his cuts and bruises in tow, each injury a badge of honor.

"'Tis your doing," his mother accuses. She wags a wrathful finger at his father. "Dragging him all about the country, telling him wild stories about this, that, or the other." She throws her arms – bleached elbow-high with flour – into the air, and the room snows. "You've taught him nothing but foolish recklessness, and don't think I'll forgive you when he comes home one day with a cracked skull."

Link twirls within the flurries.

"Is that so?" His father, feet propped at the hearth, rumbles off his bear-laugh. "Next you'll tell me it wasn't the woman that chased off a pack of bokoblins with her bare hands who I courted all those years ago." His father, who married the village battle-ax and is as heedless as the son. "You're his mother, so I suppose 'tis right of you to worry. But don't trouble your conscience, m'dear, for I'd give better odds to his thick head than anything coming up against it." His father, who wears Royal Blue and a glinting sword on his belt, who sallies off with Link into every nook and hiding place of Hyrule because, "a child can't live if he can't breathe, if he can never taste the air of the wild."

His father, who spends three months at the castle for every one at home, yet brings back only enough coin to keep hunger out of his growing family's bones, the worst of winter's chill out of their little shack of a house.

But Link's world is not moored to the seas of poverty. He drowns himself in too many delights to feel the pinch. "Come Link, let me dry you off," and the satisfying starch of his mother's apron as it towels his wet hair. "Come Link, warm yourself," and he loses himself again to the purple, fairy-like embers pulsing within the driftwood fire. Scents of stewed mutton and mulled wine. Scents of steel and sweat and a new adventure.

Poor, simple, and happy. An idyllic childhood only for those living it.

"And tomorrow, if the weather holds, we'll have another romp in the wild places, aye son?" He tousles Link's barley-colored head, then throws him high enough to kiss the thatching.

The supper things have not yet been cleared away before Link squirms out of his father's grasp and bolts for the door.

"And where are you off to?" says his mother. She puts the bread and knife away and wraps the cheese in cloth, then rubs her rounded belly, the twins mewling at her feet.

His father hoists a babe under each arm. "Let him go, let him go. There's light enough yet, and he'd better get it out of him before bed."

"Hadn't he better listen to his poor mother?"

Link cries out at this injustice. "But I do listen!"

"Oh?"

He nods. "All the time."

"To me?"

Link give a squirrel-like cock to his head, little brain thinking. "Sometimes. But mostly to the voices."

"What's that, m'boy?" his father says. "What voices?"

"Take no heed of his ramblings," his mother chides. "That child talks to the wind as though it's his best friend. Take no heed."

They bid him wash the crockery and stable the cow before they release him, and then he runs – through the vegetable garden, down the dirt path that leads to the wheat fields, past the outskirts of the cultivated lands and into the unfarmed realms of Hyrule. Where wildflowers grow, the untamed creatures roam.

He runs – not to please his father or to terrorize his mother, but for the voice lodged deep within, the undefiable whisper of _hurry, hurry, hurry._

Where is he going? It matters not. He runs because he can, because children do not run from what they are, they only run to it.


	2. Chapter 2

King Rhoam, after long and steady council with his wife, is at last willing to see reason, and concedes that a mere twenty guards should be sufficient escort for their daughter on her first excursion outside the castle walls.

"No sense in being excessive, now is there?" he says without a drop of irony and a firm pat on his wife's hand.

"Of course not, my dear." Her words are decidedly with irony as she restrains a knowing smile and strokes the golden head of her One and Only. "And I shall accompany her, for you know how much good the fresh air will do me."

Plans are arranged, provisions gathered, safeguards implemented. King Rhoam nods his approval at the reinforced carriage, the heavily armed vanguard – armoured and mounted high upon Hyrule's finest war steeds. Nothing, he is satisfied, will have opportunity to harm she who must one day become the very foundation of the kingdom.

"And to lose her," he murmurs, "will be to lose everything." But he stifles his fears and raises one, gloved finger.

The castle gates open. The drawbridge is lowered.

The carriage rumbles through and onwards. The carriage window is set high, and Zelda, instructed to remain seated, is unable to watch the landscape rushing by. But the sky is hers to enjoy, and the sight of the clouds, full and winsome in their listless promenade through the sky, is fine company for the journey.

At last the wheels jostle to a slow, and finally a stop. A little neck cranes. A pair of little blue eyes peek over the window's edge. They marvel at the grand dignity of the Royal Hyrulian guard, who have formed themselves into a perfect circle around the carriage bearing the Princess and Queen, their tabards so alarmingly blue that Zelda hardly knows when the sky ends and they begin. "How shall I see anything beyond the knights, Mama, for they are so much taller than I am."

"Very true, my darling, especially when they are mounted. But perhaps if we ask very politely we can convince them to widen the circle – just a hair, mind – and then we may peer between their shoulders, or failing that, the horses' hocks."

Zelda, who is still young enough to believe anything a grown up says genuine, replies, "That will do very well, for I have spent all my life peeking through tight spaces." Between cracks in the mortar, over the battlements of impenetrable, stone walls. On warm nights she stares for hours out of lonely arrow loops at the glittering snake of the river that winds into Castle Town and the untouchable horizon beyond. "I won't mind at all, so long as I could _see_ it!"

A liveried manservant opens the door. The stairs are let down.

"Go on, dear," her mother urges.

One, cautious, step. Then another. A crunch of grass and earth, a wide-eyed stare, and Zelda takes her first breath of un-castled air:

"It's sweet." And crisp and clean and free from the strangle of a thousand hearthfires, and when she closes her eyes and inhales again, it's as though she's never truly breathed before in her life. "Can you smell it, Mama?"

Her mother gestures to the sweep of raw color in the distance, staking a claim among the ubiquitous yellow-browns of the prairielands. "It's the wildflowers. See how well they thrive under the pure rain and unchecked sunlight?"

"Shall we go to them?"

They link arms. "I think we might." When they reach the back of the nearest knight, the Queen taps him on the shoulder, whispers something in his ear, and a door in the wall of guards opens. "As long as you don't tell your father we've breached his defenses."

"I shan't, not ever. I am very good at keeping secrets, you know."

"Are you?"

"Oh, yes. There must be a thousand things I've never told anyone. Not even you."

The Queen merely smiles. "Secrets are a bit like perfume. Only a tiny sprinkle is ever needed. Too much, and you will not easily find anyone strong enough to suffer the heady effects, including yourself."

Too excited by the adventure, Zelda does not linger on her mother's warning. Her mother, well known for forever speaking in metaphor. Her mother, wimple flapping in the breeze as they traverse over the long grass, who wears only a simple circlet of gold upon her royal head.

Her mother, the embodiment of wisdom itself, kneeling down into the wet earth with no heed to her rank or costly damask frock. "This flower is called _Amicas Dirae_ , the Moon Tulip. And here, my favorite one of all." She strokes a white-petaled wonder, but does not pluck it. "The Silent Princess. The most rare flower, and the most beautiful. The Royal Botanists say it will only grow in the wild, and that just to spite us all." Her eyes, the color of the sea in mid-winter, crinkle when she smiles. "Now, who does that remind you of?"

Zelda is sure she does not know. What rational person would trade the comfort of four walls and a warm hearth for the harsh winds and unpredictable skies of the wild? Much more does she prefer the tame, lady-like pursuits, the hours and hours spent in dusty rooms with dustier books, falling into the texts, relishing every word.

"Mama, I have read that the key to Hyrule's salvation lies buried under the ground."

"Very true. Which is why His Majesty has sent excavators across Hyrule, searching for this ancient treasure."

"I should like to be one of them."

"A savior?"

"An excavator!" And before anyone has a chance to remind her of royal comportment and clean fingernails, she plunges her soft, alabaster hands into the ground and begins to dig. "Have they looked here, do you think?"

"I don't believe they have."

"Then perhaps I shall find it."

"Find what, darling?"

"The savior of Hyrule!"

She digs and digs, digs for what seems like hours, until all her fingernails are torn and great, dark stains loom up the hem of her petticoat. Never before has she drank in the dew, tasted the freshness of dirt upon her tongue. The allure of unwalled freedom sinks into her bones as the sun sinks into the sky, and through it all she has not once noticed the quiet coughing of her mother.


End file.
